We either love ourselves, or we love others
An opinion from the Internet about Love:
“I would say, that when you call “true love" selfless, altruistic, you are confused by thinking wrongly that the greatest love wants to forego the presence of the beloved. There may be other works but the greatest study of love from a philosophical standpoint is The Nature of Love by Dietrich von Hildebrand and he is emphatic that your view is actually the OPPOSITE of love.”
There is a subtle difference.
First of all “True Love” does not want to forgo the “beloved”, true love is only about the beloved, the “lover” existing in the beloved as if the lover existed only to love the beloved.
But of course, if this happens mutually the “lover” will receive the greatest, true love from the “beloved” in return, and such a love would cause the greatest, infinite joy as they both love each other unconditionally.
This is not an arbitrary, philosophical love, it is how Nature “loves” and creates life, or if you want to consider this topic in relation to religions, this is true “Godly love”, and we are all capable of this above and against our inherent egoism.
And especially the fact that we reach this selfless, altruistic love above against egoism — which we need to restrict, annul in order to love - verifies, justifies true love.
After all I either love myself or I love others, as long as I love myself, want others to love me, I can’t unconditionally, transparently focus on the other to love that other properly, as I will love only when the condition that I also receive love.
This is how we love right now, it is basically a trade: I love you as long as I also benefit from this love, and if I don’t benefit I can’t love you.
It seems to me that von Hildebrand describes how we love instinctively, selfishly. “True, Natural" Love is something we need to learn, practice above our inherent nature.